


The City with Unseen Possibilities

by Aondeug



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-20 13:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17023794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aondeug/pseuds/Aondeug
Summary: Small desert towns are just that: small desert towns. A bit lonely perhaps and more than a little dead but a town is just a town. That is what one university student told themselves after missing a bus. What if there was more crawling underneath the town than it seemed?





	The City with Unseen Possibilities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RevMarsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevMarsh/gifts).



> For RevMarsh

I never liked it much, the desert. Not since moving here and not now. Not at all, especially not now. Maybe it’s when it stopped being a fantasy on film. Maybe it was being ripped from the siren’s song of the city. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s for the unromantic emptiness of it all, devoid of anything but sand, sand and some more sand for good measure. A touch of fraud too, more than a touch really. The town’s government is a long con job that has outlived that of our police department. Given that a town can’t just say ‘We’d really not have a government!’, it’s sadly here to stay too. I never liked the desert much, and I like it less now. In fact I hate it.

 

And that hate has deepened.

 

Not with burning fury, no. Not like one might suspect. The hate deepened instead more into a chill spite. The sort of icy frosts that overwhelms you every night and without a hint of respite; similar, in a fashion, to the frosts we get every year yet no snow for there’s never any rain here. I feel I’ve gone off the point a bit. This is to be a record, after all. Now to return to the point.

 

The point being this: I was wrong with I said the desert was devoid of life. Obviously it has life in the form of plants too pokey for their own good and little owls that can’t owl properly. That is not what I’m referring though, nor some sort of romantic awakening to the inherent beauty of the land. The chill analogy that got away from me is apt in more than one way, after all. Both in terms of the standard description of fear and in explaining my cold hate, but also in the fact that it got away at all. After all, who’d want to keep on target when faced with the cold, cold life that flows through the dunes like so much blood?

 

I never liked it much, the desert. Now I have a better idea as to why I hate it. That idea as to why is being written down, as per the desert’s request. Which, for the record, is also part of the idea. The rest will come.

 

Now then, to begin proper, it was cold at night, as always. Not quite to where it’ll break car engines and kill delicate plants people feel possessed to keep up here for god knows what reason. It was cold, though. And dark. And I’d missed my bus too. I told myself over and over while on the first bus. I did. I told myself again and again, “No, we can’t go take a piss. We just have to wait at the stop. The next one will be here like immediately after we get off and we gotta get on that so we can go home and eat cold dinner and not write that essay. Not write any of the things I want or need to. Like always. So we just gotta hold it.” Did I listen though? No, no of course not.

 

So against all better judgement, even knowing how much worse buses are up in the mountains, I went from the bus stop to a nearby pharmacy, the only place with a bathroom nearby. A place where I had to go and ask politely for a key to the bathroom before I was able to go. Surely conducive with not missing the bus. To continue however, the inside was white, sterile. Comforting in a way, though I tried to ignore the occasional torn open package on the floor; theft ravaged the town in a way I hadn’t thought possible till moving. That’s not really the point though. The point remains that I left the bus stop at all.

 

I left and when I came back what should I see but my bus driving off. I ran because of course I did. I knew I couldn’t catch it, because of course I couldn’t. I ran though. Ran right past the end of the sidewalk and into the sand, blissfully packed hard until it wasn’t, and then I was falling face first into the dirt. I landed on a rock or twelve and the bus was gone. More gone than before. I sat up and watched it pull further away, all seafoam green and school bus yellow barely visible in the night, and I picked up a rock to throw its way. Fate could not give me even that, though, as it crumbled in my hand, into so many pebbles and chunks of dirt. I dropped the bits limply in disgust and I cried. How could I not? It was cold. It was windy. I was tired. I had homework.

 

Just an hour, I told myself, as I stood up. Just an hour, if I was lucky I reminded myself. Bitching and crying wouldn’t fix a thing though and a bus driver would pass a murder happening in its wake were it not right at the stop, so I marched right back to the stop and I sat right down on the bench. Thank god the stop actually had a bench. A cover too. Rare sight up here, but a welcome one given the inky black clouds over head.

 

Sleep was welcome too. Enough so that I leaned back, forgetting a moment, how far apart the bench was from the sun cover; can’t have the homeless this place breeds knowing any form of comfort, after all. It’s all briar and dirt for you!

 

Fear shot through me, waking me right back up as I started to fall. The fear was enough to get me to catch myself. The bench was to be abandoned for the moment, traitorous bastard that it was: the bride of sleep. So I took to standing. Took to standing huddled up in the corner of the cover swearing about the wind. Why wouldn’t it blow any other way but at my face? Surely the back of the cover would work just as well. Or, better yet, it could stop entirely. It never does though. The wind simply blows and blows whispering what seem like words. Unceasing. Uncaring. Why ever brush your hair that much up here? If not for fear of matting?

 

Standing only proved acceptable for so long, though. My feet ached. It was cold. The wind was unceasing. So I sat down on the floor, huddled up. This was the first mistake. Resting my head against the backpack I hugged to my chest was the second. Actually falling asleep was the third.

 

It may be the last.

 

When I came to there was the desert ahead of me. Same as always. I yawned, scolding myself for falling asleep. Standing up, I stretched and looked up at the sky. Or would have, could I have seen it. The clouds had thickened. Black, black and swallowing up the night sky. Not a peep of  stars or the moon, both which you could always see up here in the middle of nowhere. Where there should be the lights of the cosmos there was darkness. Black, black, an inky darkness without end that grabbed at me hard, fast. I stood transfixed and it seemed as though the desert itself and my town too had found their way to space. A creeping dearth of all that seemed ready, willing to swallow up the rest of the world, though first it must start here.

 

Unnerved by that thought, I turned away and threw my arms to my side. I huffed and looked through the grated wall of the stop to see the CVS. It sure was the CVS and it sure wasn’t closed. Not yet. No cars in the parking lot though, which was a bit odd. Even at these hours there should have at least been the vehicles of the one or two staff left there. 

 

I didn’t think too much more about that for the moment and checked my phone. What was the time anyway? How long did I sleep for? Would there even be buses? No response when I pressed down the power button. Not even when I held it down. A lump formed in my throat. No, no don’t you be out you stupid phone, I begged. Begged as I pressed and pressed at the phone, even stabbing a finger at the screen. Nothing. Not a peep. Just a dead phone. I bit my lip and closed my eyes. God. Dammit. How could this night get worse?

 

Even when you live here for ages you forget to keep your connection to the outside world alive. Fool.

 

Connection lost and the thought of how we don’t have any cops up here, I decided to check the pharmacy. There might be no one there but an employee but an employee would do. All I had to do was ask the time and, if it was too late to catch the next bus, ask if I could call my family. That was the plan. Simple. Just find the employee in a pharmacy with no cars in the parking lot and not even a bike when the nearest housing was miles and miles away in a desert with no cops, not authority not bent.

 

I didn’t think of the lack of cars though as I entered. No, I just thought of how great the place was. Bright lights, lines and lines of product, a photo booth and pharmacy. Safe. Bright. No dark storm clouds. As lonely it could be though, which was to be expected at this hour. There wasn’t even anyone at the front. They had probably just went around to do go backs or something. Closing had to be soon and no one was likely to show up, so why not devote everyone to closing?

 

I couldn’t find the employees. Not a single one and certainly not any customers. I walked up and down aisle after aisle. I walked past beauty products, toys, food, insipid cards… no one. There wasn’t a single person. Nor was there a clock on the walls of the photo center or the pharmacy, so I couldn’t just check the time and leave. I wasn’t about to hop the counter to check the time on a register either. Not yet. Getting the cops from the next city over called on me wasn’t in my plans for the night. That was going home, eating, and writing that damn essay.

 

My current, immediate plans though were to keep wandering. I circled the perimeter, going from one aisle to the next. I paced back and forth through them in search of life. I couldn’t find the life though. I couldn’t and my head seemed to swim. Perhaps it was the light? The circling? My growing panic? I never much liked being in stores; they gave me fits of anxiety. I assumed it was just that and walked past the boxes of cereal and looked up to see lines of lipstick. Lipstick though it should have been elsewhere. The makeup was on the other side of the store, after all. Far from the food. I had lost track of time, and space for that matter. The hours were catching up to me I assumed. So it can’t have been a long nap. 

 

At this point I was getting irate. Where was the cashier? Or anyone? The store was open and all and I couldn’t find anything except lipstick, cereal, and cards. I was tired of this searching, and tired in general. With a huff I went off back to the front to just wait at the register. They’d have to go back there to lock up at some point, I told myself. So no sense in making myself dizzy walking about the store some more. As I walked down the aisle and took a left past the endcap I didn’t find the register though.

 

I should have.

 

That’s where it was in the store. Where it had been for years. All I found though were the freezers, which should have been at the opposite wall entirely. Frustrated, I walked past the freezers seemingly passing the food aisles until I blinked and found myself next to the toys. That shift was jarring enough that I stopped and stood. I took a breath. Closed my eyes and opened them to find the toys still, not at all where they should be. Passing through the aisle I found the cards though along with the pharmacy. Right where they should be. Just right where they are supposed to be.

 

I trekked past the toys and past the makeup to find the register. Right where it should be. A part of me had feared I’d been dreaming, but seeing it there in a fashion that lined up with my memories put that thought aside. I had just lost the time again. That happened to me in stores at times, so I just chalked it up to anxiety or sleepiness.

 

Thankfully at the front there was finally someone behind the counter. A tall, tall pale man, thin as could be and with a face I thought regal. It was the kind of face you’d see in paintings of kings, I thought. That sort of face. There was a vague sense of familiarity to it too. The kind that came with faces so like five others that you’d never be able to remember it. Not beyond, perhaps, the thought of ‘They looked like some painting I’ve seen before’. I’d certainly never remember this face. Not beyond that impression.

 

The cashier was leaning against the back counter till he saw me close the gap. He pushed himself up and off, nary a yawn or swear about a customer in sight. No, he simply smiled in that sterile cashier fashion as I walked up to the counter. ”Can I help you?” he asked in a smooth voice that carried with it a homely, familiar air.

 

“Ah, no,” I said stupidly before adding, “I mean. Yeah! I was wondering if you could tell me the time? My phone’s kind of dead and I’ve got a bus to catch…”

 

“A bus? Last one was about ten minutes ago,” he said while glancing at the register screen. My heart fell. I missed the bus because I’d taken a stupid nap. I’d have to call my family and wake them up at god knows what hour of night. As I dreaded that he added in his smooth rumble, “They stop running at about 10 right?”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Look, you need to use our phone I’m guessing. We’re not supposed to let customers but I figure you need it right now.”

 

I almost cried at that. I think I did cry, actually. “Yeah...Thank you. Really,” I said as I took the old receiver from him and prepared to dial the home phone, “I’ll just call my family and see if one of them can come get me.”

 

His smile softened, that strange, kingly face seeming a rock in this ocean of sand. A face so familiar yet not at all. That voice all too familiar and yet not at all which said, “I need to go check something. Give you a bit of space too. Be right back.” I’m guessing anyway. I wasn’t quite listening to him as I dialed in the number. I said “Thanks,” automatically though and he was gone.

 

The ringing was there though. One ring then two, three, four and finally someone picked up. They did. I thought so at first. Instead all I heard was silence. Even after I said “Hey,” all I got back was silence and I had to wonder if I dialed right. So I hung up and tried again, double checking the numbers. One, two, three, then four rings and again I just got silence. I asked them to cut it the fuck out. Pleaded even. I didn’t get an answer. Third time’s the charm I told myself. It wasn’t. Four rings then silence. I slammed the receiver down and cried. Fuck. Maybe try my uncle’s cell? No, he’d never pick up. Not at this hour. Crying or no I tried the home phone again, a fourth time, and this fourth time I got words.

 

I got words.

 

Words in a language I couldn’t parse and in a voice I couldn’t pin. Deep, vast, gravelly. Almost like the desert winds. A voice that was five voices in one and five alone, at once. Voices, a voice, that seemed a storm, dark and fierce and only repeating those same words again and again, though I couldn’t grasp them. Four times it sang them, a chant almost, and not once could I grab hold of a single syllable. Not even an impression of one. I couldn’t find the boundaries of the words or the sounds. I couldn’t hear where one began and the other ended. I could only hear those words and they seemed an eternity in five repeated in quadrille.

 

Head aching I put down the receiver.

 

I turned around to leave, a sense of what this was coming to me. I saw him, the cashier, regal and familiar and strange and faceless though possessed of a face.

 

“Get through?” he asked, calm as before. Normal as before.

“Yeah,” I lied, “Gonna go wait outside for them. Don’t want them to miss me.”

 

He laughed at that. “It’s cold out there you know!”

 

“I like the cold, thanks again,” I forced out as I walked past him and out the store, fast as I could. The store that was no longer comforting to me. Had it ever been? Truly? I didn’t know then. I don’t know now but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I left the store and that I was outside. Free. Free to realized I was dreaming. Free to no longer see the bus stop or the road. Free to turn around and find the pharmacy had left me too.

 

Free to dream.

 

Sadly dream I had to. I tried all the tricks. Pinching myself did nothing. Reminding myself of how impossible the pharmacy had been did nothing. All falling over did was give me a bump on the head and brambly prickles on my clothes that I had to pick off. None of it helped. As I picked off the prickles I tried to will something pleasant in being. My cat, a cup of tea, my home, literally anything but an endless desert. I got nothing. Not even a peep. Of course. I never was much good at lucid dreaming. Either in the having fun or in the escaping.

 

I swore. Loud. Just a good loud “FUCK!” and I stomped the ground. I kicked a rock that crumbled to bits. None of it helped really. I was still asleep, likely missing my real bus along with the dream bus. The sky was darker still and though it seemed to let no light through I could see the expanse of sand clear, as if shone upon by some unseen moon. I looked up again to check the clouds, once more. There was no moon. Only those same clouds and nearer to me than they seemed before. As though they were crawling down to the floor, threatening to swallow me whole. They swam, swam in that way clouds do and with it so did my heart.

 

Not wanting to look much longer at the clouds I looked ahead again. Sand, sand, and more sand. A joshua tree or five. Too many tumbleweeds. That’s all that waited me. That was all that could in the real world, and it seemed the same in the dream. If I was lucky I’d not see a single mattress dumped by some asshole. If I was lucky I’d find my home instead and I could waste the rest of the dream in the comfort of warmth and walls. Standing around was getting me nowhere though as, unlike the clouds, the world about me seemed stubbornly static. It would get me nowhere. So I started to walk.

 

I walked and walked and walked and walked. I saw not one person, not one animal. I heard a few though. The eerie howls of wolves and even though they didn’t live in the hills, not at all. I saw no wolves, though. Not at all. I saw instead sand, sand, and more sand. I saw a joshua tree or five and too many tumbleweeds. Just as I had expected. I also saw the mountains off in the distance, higher peaks still than my desert home. I saw them looming up like jagged teeth of obsidian in the night. Above me the clouds still neared, inching nearer and nearer with the threat of becoming not just black clouds but a black fog, thick as can be.

 

I prayed they wouldn’t.

 

I prayed the mountains wouldn’t either for a reason I did not grasp then. 

 

Praying or no I walked and I walked. The wolves kept calling behind and around me and they called ever closer and closer, just like the clouds. Loud howls and songs of primal terrors and in the mountains where coyotes should be. Not one coyote cry though. Only wolves and their songs neared and neared me, filling me with a dread. One thousand voices they seemed, all baying for blood. I picked up my pace, walking as fast as I could and nearer still the voices got. A panic seized me, silversharp and quick, and I burst into a run. Frantic, unplanned, not knowing where to go, where I could go. I found sand and sand in endless heaps and joshuas growing taller and taller as the wolf howls sounded on and on. I ran and ran, searching for a house, a store, reality. Anything but sand and songs. 

 

Instead I got shapes and shapes to my side. Shapes that weren’t people and that weren’t hounds. No, they were the great silhouettes of birds. Birds black as death. Birds tall, proud and seeking to feast on the world itself, it seemed, rotting carcass that it was. Crows. Crows that crowed but what came out were not caws but howls.

 

I’d found my wolves.

 

And I found the desert floor again. My ankle twisted as I’d come down and I hissed at the pain. Pulling my leg close to myself to try and ease the pain I looked in fear around me. Side to side. Even behind me though I fell over again. Looking for the birds, the birds with the voices of wolves. Nothing. Not at all. Not till I looked back in front of me. Then I saw it: a joshua tree.

 

Massive, mighty and venerable the tree loomed over me. Perhaps the biggest one I have ever seen. Bigger than they should reasonably be able to get. Just a twisted tower of bladelike leaves and knotted bark. The branches, thick arms, reached up to the sky in what seemed a veneration of some god. I looked up as far as I could and still yet more tree I found. Only more tree, peaking above even the dread clouds which were now a dread fog. I looked to the sides and saw the tree’s branches stretching out far yet not forever as the top did. I saw too a curtain of fog where the branches ended. The tree seemed to hold back the fog itself, which now touched the earth itself where the tree did not reach.

 

Under the tree at its base I found garbage, as I might when awake. Broken microwaves, cups of soda from the new gas station, toys, computer parts, a mattress even. I saw other things too. Ones that caught my eye for their oddity. I crept closer and took a better look. Signs, street signs to be exact. I swiped the dust off one and saw a name I knew. The same on the second and the third and the fourth. All were names that led to the town hall. All of them. There was more than signs and trash too. There were pieces from the small museum at the water building. There it was, the plaque about our old wine industry. There was the wheel from that old cart, or was it a reconstruction? Those old paper clippings too, though they were crumpled on the ground. I opened up one and smoothed it out to find that article about our founder. Another was the one about the first orchard. The next about how the orchards had all died, taken by a mysterious illness and suddenly at that.

 

This treasure trove of trash didn’t last long though. As I looked through another articles, this the one about our one serial killer as all towns in California must have, it fell apart into mist. A mist dark as the fog around me and heavy as sand. I jumped back in a fright and watched as the mist hit the ground, turning to ash. The computer parts, the toys, the signs, and the mattress too. All turned to dark mist and from that to dark ash. Ash that seemed to thrum with the same sort of life that lay in the clouds, in the dunes, in that dream pharmacy. One familiar. One mighty, deep, regal.

 

Kicking away, I pushed myself to my feet. The wolves cried out once more, this time above me, and I looked up to see the joshua’s arms. Its leaves, bladelike, all had eyes. Each of them and in those eyes I saw crows. Crows inside the eyes of crows, for the leaves weren’t leaves at all. No, they were crows, the torsos of them, and they turned to look at me, each with intent dark as the ash. The ash that crawled near me, seeming a creature it. The crows too. Their bodies writhed and wriggled, pulling themselves free from their tree prison with hunger as great as the fog.

 

I ran.

 

What else was I to do? 

 

I ran and as I ran I saw the mountains before me. The one mountain seemed nearer than the others too. It stood out among the fog, visible even through those mists. The only thing visible now. Not left with any other options I ran to it desperately. I begged for it to get closer. Just closer. Close enough to be reached. A sanctuary from the mists and the wolves that were actually crows born from trees surrounded by ash from fog. Away from my town. Away from the desert.

 

The mountain obliged. It seemed to near me with each step. Not just my traveling to it, but it reaching out to me as well, taking its own silent steps. With every step I took it took its own. As I neared it it grew more regular too. Sharp, straight lines all joining up in a perfect peak. It seemed a structure more than a hill and I begged it be so. I begged for it to be a way out of this damnable desert and I swore that if I could I hide within its walls from this all I’d worship whatever in the fuck lived there. Even nothing.

 

The mountain obliged my request.

 

The pyramid did.

 

It was a pyramid too. One out of Egypt seemingly and all in my desert, or to be more accurate, my dream desert. The thing was massive. More so even than the joshua tree and that tree had seemed to hold back the fog with its sheer size. I’ve the sense now to see it was not so much holding it back as it was that the tree was the fog. Either way. The pyramid was large and black. Sharp, seemingly made of volcanic glass, yet not reflective like it should have been. No, the black ate the light around it. It seemed less a solid object than a void of pitch black, a hole in reality. Darker still loomed the gaping maw of its entrance, to the sides of which stood two towering sphinxes. Neither possessed heads as they should have. Only tentacles curling and twisting in a disgusting display. Horrifying as it all was, this seemed almost a comfort at the moment compared to the wolves that were crows.

 

I cried out in terrified joy and I sprinted faster yet, expending all that I had to make it inside. There was no door to the tomb to block me from entering. Likewise there was no door to block out the crows and no way I could construct one in time. Yet I felt, deep down, that should I make it inside I would be safe. Should I make it, being the key words. My heart seemed about to burst, my throat ached, blood roared in my ears and the crows neared ever closer. I past the sphinxes, as did the crows. I ran, ran, ran through the entrance of the pyramid, swallowed up by the darkness. I ran, ran, ran as far inside as I could before the strain had proved too much to bear.

 

I could not run further. I stumbled, catching myself on a stone wall. Next I vomited. As I heaved, a fear stabbed at me that I could not react to from the pain of it all. There was no door! No door at all to keep the crows out who would surely follow me inside. Right I was too as I could hear their howls echoing off the walls of the entrance hall. There was another cry that joined them, however.

 

Squeaking cries, the voices of thousands of bats, filled the air around me. I managed to look up to see them, shadowy wings and all fluttering down from their roost roused to an attack. They didn’t have the faces of mice though, but tentacles like the sphinxes outside. I turned pale at that and fell to my knees, partly from terror and partly from exhaustion. 

 

The bats, the crows, surely they both would devour me. The bats did not rend my flesh though. No, they flew past me and towards the damned crows, screeching all the way. Violent, raging. Soon I heard more than howls and screeches. I heard an unexpected sound. I heard the pained whimpers of wolves. Confused, horrified, I turned my head to see the bats in pitched combat with the wolves. Some would try to break through the cloud of wings, only to be set upon by one hundred hungry mouths hidden in tentacles. Others panicked and fled out the mouth of the pyramid. Others still snapped angrily at the bats, standing their ground.

 

Strength of a sort returned to me and dragging myself to my feet I pulled away from the scene. Terrifying though they may be I thanked my squeaking saviours. Saviours though they might be I was also unwilling to stay near them long. So I went the only way I could: further inside the pyramid.

 

Further inside was darkness. A darkness I was growing accustomed to by the time. Not for fondness or acceptance, but just for familiarity at the point. What with the fog, the ash, the pyramid, it had stayed its welcome long enough to make a sort of sense after a point. One too familiar. One that seemed to swallow up the cries of bats and wolves. To swallow up me as I walked in the pitch black for what seemed hours. Walked until at last I calmed. Adrenaline left me and dread settled back in. A dread fear of the dark, sensible as it was. No longer did I hear  wolves or bats. No longer did I see wings, leathery or feathery. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. Mortified I stopped and reached out, groping for a wall. For anything. I stepped forward in the dark, begging just for one source of contact.

 

My fingers brushed against stone. Smooth, soft, warm stone. Tears welled up and I walked neared to the wall to rest my cheek against it. Something was there still. I could sense at least one thing in this abyss: warm stone against my cheek. There was another sensation too. The stone seemed to thrum against my cheek with life. It was a slow, steady beat  almost of a heart. Entrancing and mystifying, for a moment that sound seemed to be all there was to reality, absorbing even the warmth of the wall. There was just a heartbeat, deeper than any I’d heard before. The panic slipped from my heart as I listened to it beat on and one, my heart coming to meet its rhythm. As the panic slipped from me in slipped light. Flickering light playing against the walls slipped into view.

 

The light of a torch.

 

Overjoyed I left the safe thrum of the wall to investigate the source of the light. It was indeed a wooden torch. One I could remove from the wall too. Torch in hand, I stood there for a moment simply to admire the flames licking the air. Orange and red tongues against the darkness...They seemed wondrous to behold. So wondrous that I was lost in them till again the thrum of the pyramid filled me.

 

Snapped from my flamefed trance I decided to follow the sound. Where else was I to go, especially when the heartbeat led further and further in, away from my attackers. Further in I went with my torch to light the way, emboldened by its flames.

 

The hall stretched on and on and on seemingly forever, until at least I came to a set of stairs. They led down and I went with them. At their base was a crossroads. I could go to the left or to the right. Not knowing which way to turn I pressed an ear to the wall, hoping that the heart beats would lead in one particular direction. Listening hard it seemed that was the case. The sounds clearly led to the right. So the right path it was then.

 

Mind set I headed down the right path. As I continued I took to looking more closely at the walls around me. They were sandstone it looked like. Unlike the outside of the pyramid they were a soft, warm brown. Unlike one would expect from a pyramid they seemed almost new too. No wear and tear on them at all. Not even a speck of dust. There were just perfect stacks of sandstone bricks that stretched on and on, making up a cramped passageway.

 

The passage eventually opened up into a wide room. One with a high ceiling. One so high I couldn't see it, even if I held my torch up at it. Not liking the dark very much, I turned away from that and took to exploring the room. I kept my free hand on a wall and walked around the perimeter of the room. It was an absolutely massive chamber and one seemingly with no other exits. This sadly meant that should I wish to explore more of the room I’d have to venture into the middle of it. A thought I disliked.

 

Disliked or no, I steeled myself and lifted my hand from the wall. Next I stepped forward into the abyss of the room. It seemed as though the dark encroached in on me, a living thing in itself as I walked deeper into the room. For a time I seemed lost and afloat in nothingness save for the circle of light my torch created. Its light kept me bold enough to keep moving and as I moved the light eventually hit a wall.

 

Upon closer look it was not a wall, not exactly. At least not one of the ones of the perimeter. No, it was a massive frieze. One that was painted with hieroglyphics and scenes. Curious, I examined it closer. The characters on it were certainly hieroglyphics. That much I could tell. Like many kids, I’d gone through an Egypt phase and that phase had gotten me to learn the phonetic values of Egyptian hieroglyphics. I only had the understanding of a child though, and that understanding was years old. So though I knew the characters to be real ones I couldn’t read them. Not even phonetically. I could admire the art though, both of the writing and of the scenes they narrated.

 

The scenes seemed to be a story like one would expect of a pyramid. There were people with animal faces, a Pharaoh, and the like. Starting from the far right of the frieze I looked at the whole story. With only pictures to go off, it was only somewhat intelligible. The nuance was entirely lost on me. What I did see though seemed worrying. In the first scene I saw crowds of people congregating. Some had carts, some apples, some grapes. There was a town in the next and above that sat a pharaoh. Moving further down, the people were before an altar with gifts in hand for the people with animal faces, the gods, and the Pharaoh whom even the gods were beneath. The next scene was the tentacled headed sphinxes and that was a shock to me. Still I looked on and saw fewer and fewer gifts offered to the gods, sphinxes, and the Pharaoh. Within the following scene there were no gifts at all and his kingly face seemed dark with rage. The sphinxes moved past him, closer to the town. They seemed ready for a hunt. Yet another scene showed the Pharaoh raising his hand and the one after the people had fallen to the floor, dead. Their town crumbled. The sphinxes stood tall above the devastation, dead apple orchards and vineyards and broken carts. The scenes were growing more and more hateful as I looked on and I liked them less and less. Still I looked on until I saw the final scene: a person headed towards the pyramid, a reed in hand.

 

Disgusted by that image for a reason I didn’t understand I turned away from the whole fireze. I walked back the way I came, intending to leave this room and chance the other passage to see if it would take me in deeper. Yet even though I walked the same way I came I didn’t find the entrance I’d come through. I found only the wall. A fear shot through me and I patted the wall looking for a doorway only to find wall, wall, and more wall. I traveled the whole perimeter of the room again and again. Try as I might though there was no doorway, no exit. Only more wall.

 

Thoroughly horrified at that I threw down the torch in a panic, stupid as that was. The flames went out and yet as they did the room was filled with the light of many torches. All of it. Sudden. At once. The whole room was illuminated for me to see and as I looked at the room I saw there was not just one frieze. There were many. All with similar scenes. Sphinixes with tentacles for heads, animal faced gods, towns swallowed by death and decay, and a lone person holding a reed. They all ended the same way each too. With that person holding the reed before the Pharaoh.

 

I felt the shock of a mistake.

 

Not liking the scenes at all I turned from them to the walls instead. I would find an exit, I told myself. I had to. But I couldn’t find one. Instead I saw more horrors painted out beautifully. I saw the bats, the wolves, and other creatures still covered in tentacles where they should not be. I saw the Pharaoh too and he towered above all things. All of them. Guiding their fates it seemed like and with his hands alone. There were letters too underneath the scenes but they were all the same letter repeated again and again: the reed. I stepped back one and did not find the floor under my foot, just air. Startled, I fell backwards and down into the abyss. I fell unconscious too.

 

I woke up.

 

Not in my bed in the real world. Not even on the hard floor of the bus stop. No, I woke up in the pyramid. A different room of it, to be exact. This one was well lit by torches, as well. Though where the last room’s flames were a warm orange these were a deep green, reminiscent of the sea. I looked at the ceiling above me and found more lovingly painted scenes like the ones in the frieze room. These ones were of many people holding reeds and clay tablets. Some seemed to be writing, others simply standing, some offering their writings to strange headed gods. About these writers lay what seemed to be he histories of many towns and cities and in the center of it all stood the Pharaoh brandishing a cane and an expressionless mask.

 

Reminded of the black yet clear face of the cashier for a reason I didn’t then grasp, I sat up and looked to my side. I was not on the floor but on a rough bed raised off the floor, not even padded. I stepped off and looked around myself. What I found were other similar platforms, each bearing not people but caskets. A chill ran down my spine when I noted the jars next to the caskets. Jars upon jars, all carefully arranged near the caskets.

 

Perhaps this shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was, after all, a pyramid and I knew at least enough that my dreams could present them as the tombs they are. Pyramids were the tombs of kings though, and these certainly weren't kings. Their caskets were too plain and too numerous to be. Swallowing my fear, I decided to investigate one closer.

 

I walked up to the casket and look at it closely. It was plain save for some hieroglyphics. I assumed it might be the name of the person. The wall above the casket painted a scene of a scribe with a reed in hand. Circling the main scene were smaller such scenes. One of a child with no parents, another of a temple, then one of what appeared to be lessons with a class. It seemed a history of this person’s life. Were I able to read the characters narrating I would have been able to understand much of their life. I could not.

 

The jars I looked at next. I knew what must be in them. Anyone that took Ancient Civ in middle school would know. Still I knelt down and placed a hand on one of the smaller jars’ lids. After a count to three I pulled off the lid and looked inside. The contents were a human heart. One that rotted slowly.  I’d never seen a human one before in person until then, and as I looked I could feel my own pounding hard. There it was. The organ that kept me alive. This one far older than my own. Once it kept this scribe living. Now it simply sat in a jar, preserved for all time. At least that was the hope. As I pondered this the deep thrum of a heartbeat returned to my ears. Loud. Vast. A thick sound that rang through my very being. My own heart seemed to match its beats, making me even more aware of my own heart than I already was.

 

Unable to bear that sound any longer, I placed the lid back on, in the hopes it would quiet the sound. It did not. No, the heart continued to beat on and on. Incessantly so and as it did it seemed to increase in intensity, engulfing me. It seemed as though all reality would soon be the sound and the sound alone. That is how palpable the rhythmic beat was. I stepped back from the jar wondering if I’d upset its owner. Was I going to be cursed? Or had I been the moment I entered the pyramid? These thoughts running through me, I whispered an apology and bolted for a torch. One hanging near a different casket. Torch in hand I held it out, almost like a weapon. It might not have been much of a club but it brought me some comfort.

 

I glanced about the room furtively looking for an exit. I could not find one. Of course not. They’d been buried in here, never to be found again. So was I it seemed. Just as hopeless as I had been in the fireze room. Still too hopeless to wake myself up. Would I be trapped in this dream forever? Would I rot in a hospital bed somewhere, while I rotted in a dream pyramid?

 

**“No.”**

 

A single word. No, it was more the impression of a word. An impression of the very concept of “No”. An impression so heavy, so indicative of the meaning that it seemed to take the shape of the word “No”. Of every possible form of the word “No” simultaneously. In all the languages possible. Ones I knew, ones I didn’t know, and ones that hardly seemed human. All called out at once to express the very concept of negation itself though. My head ringing with that word and the thumping of my heart I backed up against a wall, hoping to make myself smaller. To hide from the sounds themselves.

 

“’No’ what?!” I shouted as a growing darkness spread on the wall opposite me. As though shadows themselves leaked through the wall and the off it, stepping forward. Yes, yes there was a shadow stepping off the wall and forward becoming a familiar shape as it did: a man. I waved the torch wildly at the figure, trying to threaten it to leave. To make it cease, simply vanishing from reality itself. The figure refused to deign my request and I shouted my question again, “’No’, what?!”

 

The mouth of this human figure moved and out its throat came a voice I remembered well: the cashier from pharmacy. “No, you will not rot here. Not today.”

 

The face I saw was not the cashier though. Oh, it was the same face but it was also the face of ten thousand kingly portraits and ten thousand nobodies on the street all at once. It was no face at all and yet every face I had ever seen all at once. It was the face of the Pharaoh.

 

I dropped the torch and stared open mouthed and wide eyed in a mix of shock and terror. The man, the Pharaoh, stepped closer to me seeming just a man. In appearance at least. In feel, though? He bore the aura of an authority so great it almost brought me to my knees for its weight alone. Instead I fell back against the wall limply and slid to the floor.

 

“Is that truly a greeting worthy a king?” he asked in a voice that started first as the cashier’s and meldied into another man’s voice all together. One no less familiar to me.

 

I’d no words for him and scrambled to grab the torch again.  I grabbed it and held it out and waved it as threateningly as I could. The Pharaoh sighed and stopped for a moment. Emboldened by that I staggered back to my feet and walked a few steps from the wall, waving the torch all the way. That is until the thing collapsed into black mists in my hands, just as the paper from earlier had.

 

“Do be a deal more polite,” he said as I yelped and pressed myself flat against the wall again. “This is no time to be disrespecting your host,” he continued as I tried to shrink away from him and the mists, “Especially not when a request was so kindly answered.”

 

“What?” I asked, baffled.

 

He lowered his hand and smiled. “You asked for sanctuary, did you not? A hiding place from the Dreamlands and their cruelty?”

 

“I…” my voice caught in my throat as I remembered in horror that promise I had made. During absolute terror yes, but it was a promise made nonetheless. “Maybe,” was all I could get out.

 

The Pharaoh huffed, “Threatening your host and then lying the next? I heard the cry, do not play otherwise. A request was made for shelter. Shelter has been afforded.”

 

“But I didn’t even say anything!” I shouted at him. Tears were coming to my eyes. I’d made a promise, I had. Stupidly, stupidly I made one and now it was coming to bite me back possibly. Was I trapped?

 

“Oh, but you did say it,” he said as he reclined in the air, seemingly sitting upon an invisible throne, “Very loudly at that. Whether they were audibly spoken matters not.”

 

“You...read minds?”

 

“I hear words that are spoken to me, such as you did. Now, I say again. You made a request for safety and it has been granted. There was a stipulation, however. One that you yourself made.”

 

Panic at being trapped gave me a sort of bravery. Enough to stand up from the wall and challenge that, “I’m not going to bow to some bullshit from a dream and damn sure not for something I didn’t even say!

 

The Pharaoh did not respond. He stared at me hard from his throne, disgust at my arrogance clear. As he glared at me the sounds of many caws began to fill the air and I watched as from his flesh pressed out faces, struggling against his skin. Long, long snouts snapped from under his skin, pushing and straining until at last they pierced the flesh. He moved not an inch as the snapping jaws wriggled from his form. Legs following and thick bodies and tails too, covered in dark, dark fur. Wolves, full grown, larger than me by far, and all screaming with the voices of crows. My bravery slipped away in an instant and I couldn’t gain the strength even to budge from my spot. I simply watched as the wolves stood at his side, cawing out fiercely and casting the shadows of sea things against the walls of the crypt. “Your continued denial will wear on me after a point. It will be a shame if it does,” he said with a voice that was five voices at once. He raised a hand, seemingly in signal.

 

I couldn’t make the words. Not any words, but especially not those of my protest. This had all been a trick? The crows with the voices of wolves and the tree and the ashes of my town? All of it had been him and a trick for what? To get me to beg for safety from it all?

 

“Trick or no a deal was struck, one that is binding by our laws. You will find them far stricter than your own too, should you persist.”

 

“But...that…”

 

“It is not fair? You are being offered a position that no one else from your home could ever hope for, and true safety as well. It is an act of magnaminty on my part should you agree to your half of the deal.”

 

I couldn’t fight that. Not as the weight of the world seemed to fall upon me and as I realized again and again in shock that I’d made a promise. I cried and buried my face into my knees, as though that’d make the dream that was not a dream go away, wolves and pharaohs and all.

 

“You will be spared the decay and you will be offered a chance to write.”

 

I placed my hands over my head and shivered as I waited to be torn to shreds by the wolves.

 

“To write. To chronicle. To capture this town.”

 

Like my journals? Forever in a pyramid? I could feel the breath of wolves against my flesh and I pulled my knees closer to myself.

 

“You will be a royal scribe, the chronicler of this kingdom,” his voice boomed and I knew it to be true, those words. Inevitable and undeniable though it was all but a dream, “Or I shall find another.”

 

Just like the others on the walls. I had been grabbed, plucked from reality, to be tricked into a job. A job to jot down in maddening scrawls the whole history of my home until at last it fell and me with it. I would fall with it but I would be trapped here? In this world of dreams where wolves cry like crows forever more, while the town rotted in the void?

 

“Yes,” the Pharaoh dictated.

 

I looked up from my knees to see the wolves had receded. Indeed, they collapsed into mists as he stood with all the might of a god. I looked up as he walked over to me and presented to me a notebook, like one you would purchase from a pharmacy. He also presented me with a package of pens with a wave of his hand.

 

“You will write stories that man shall read long after you pass. You will call others to this, knowingly or no. You will chronicle this reign.”

 

I knew, for certain, that this would be true or I would die.

 

And then I was awake. I was being shaken by someone and I mumbled and groaned, the dream still thick on me.

 

“Hey. Hey the bus is here. It’s gonna be the last one for the night.”

 

Those words shot through me and woke me up quick. With a hasty, “Thanks!” I scurried up and onto the bus and paid my fare. The next I sat down and looked out the window, to get a look at my helper. It was a face I knew yet didn’t know, dressed in a cashier’s outfit. Almost like the man in my dream. That couldn’t be and with a shrug I opened my backpack to pull out the book I was reading. Instead I found the notebook and package of pens from my dream. Like one might purchase from a pharmacy.

 

It is in this notebook and with these pens that I’m writing this now. About how I missed my bus and how I fell asleep. About the pharmacy in my dream and the sands too. About the trash and the treasure circling the tree, and crows that were wolves and wolves that were crows. About the scribes and the bats and the pyramid. About the Pharaoh. I’m writing about this all to prove yet that I can write, as asked. To avoid the fate of those who refuse. Around me there are several books about the towns in the area. On my laptop there is a browser open and tabs and tabs and tabs, all about this town. My words are not on the screen, though. They are in the notebook as they must be. They will be written here just as has been ordered and written in full. Both my story and the story of the town itself. All will be collected and eventually they will be found by another. All for the cashier who is the clouds and the relics and the wolves and the crows and the mayor and the town, and most of all a king.

 

My king now.


End file.
